Objects Of Immersion

Traditionally, researchers and developers have approached immersion as an activity in which they are moving the audience between experiential states i.e. from reality to virtual reality. However, this consideration can work against immersion as it can induce cognitive dissonance if the audience experiences significant differences between the states. For example, this is particularly noticeable in Virtual Reality whereby the audience’s visual perception of the displayed world is not matched across their other senses, often leading to adverse physical reactions, such as, nausea. This is arguably because immersion in Virtual Reality is often approached with a desire to recreate the physical experience portrayed within the content. In this research we propose considering immersion from a perspective through which we create an alternate hybrid reality that dynamically adapts fictional components of a story narrative dependent upon the particular context of the audience, thus approaching immersion through a lens of emotional engagement. In particular, this project will investigate whether media can be dynamically contextualised for a particular audience using objects in three distinct forms: media, data, and physical to produce more immersive experiences.